Search For My Tongue by Sujata Bhatt

'You ask me what I mean

by saying I have lost my tongue.'

The use of direct address and conversational tone suggests she is talking from the experience of losing her sense of identity to someone who hasn't experienced it. Creates a close relationship between Bhatt and the reader and starts the search for the answer.

'Two tongues in your mouth'

This extended metaphor demonstrates the unnatural nature and strange feeling of speaking two languages and how it can leave you feeling.

'And if you lived in a place you had to

speak a foreign tongue,

your mother tongue would rot,'

The use of juxtaposition and enjambment then the end-stopped line shows how, over time, you lose fluency of language. There is a suggestion through a particular word that some people would not be allowed to speak or feel like they couldn't use their own language or that a foreign language has been imposed.

'I thought I spit it out'

The choice of words makes the original language sound like something disgusting, like phlegm perhaps. This may suggest the way the original language was seen by others for using this language as something inferior to their own language. Reflects the horror and disgust she feels at losing her mother tongue and identity.

'You could not use them both together'

Sad tone; wanting the two languages to work alongside but they can't.

Why does the writer use Gujarati in the poem but not translate it?

It is a way for Bhatt to put the assumed English reader in a situation of dealing with a foreign language. This could help represent Bhatt's speaker's experience of learning English.

'It ties the other tongue in knots,'

The two languages are imagined as being in battle, with the invader being defeated. Clearly this could be seen to refer to colonial powers and independence. Personification shows the desire of a first language to remain with someone as being strong.

'It blossoms out of my mouth.'

The first language/culture is shown to be lasting, and in this flower imagery is thought of here as something natural, beautiful and eternal. Possibly juxtaposing the idea of rotting. It could also be an extended metaphor to show how it is harder than you think to lose your mother tongue.

What are the poem's central themes?

Language, cultural identity and difficulty of changing culture.

What's the central message of the poem?

Culture and language is a part of you and never leaves you.

How is the poem structured? How does this help to depict the ideas?

Split into three parts. Bhatt uses a mixture of language in her poem. There is the conversational tone of the opening, the extended metaphor of language being like a plant, and there is also the use of Gujarati. The language works by concentrating attention on the metaphor and by making us hear but not understand the Gujarati. She speaks her native language in the middle part of the poem, this signifies how her mother tongue is a central part of her life. The poem is exploratory; it is a form of thinking. By the end of the poem, the poet has changed her mind. In dreams, in the sub-conscious mind, the original language still lives.

Tone

In the first stanza, it is anxious and perturbed, but in the final stanza, it's happy, jubilant and celebratory.

What language is used for the middle section and why?

Gujarati possibly to suggest it is a still at their heart. It is given equal status to the English, as it is not translated. We can hear what it sounds like, but unless we speak some Gujarati we cannot know what it means.

How does the speaker's attitude/tone change during the poem?

The imagery of 'your mother tongue would rot' in the first stanza is reversed in the last stanza as the 'bud' of the mother tongue re-opens.

What is the poem about?

An individual person's experience of moving to a foreign country and speaking two languages.

What might the poem be about judging by Bhatt's background?

The fact that Bhatt is Asian may suggest that she is referring to how the English colonised India, imposing laws and language. The poem could be seen as using language to represent the struggle of colonial experience. By trying to control the language colonisers tried to control the thoughts, feelings, values and ideas of the people they colonised. The poem shows how the native culture survives, at a deep level, and is able to overthrow in the end the invading culture.

What is the poet's speaker's attitude in the poem?

Clearly there is a sense of wonder about the re-flowering of the native language, and the imagery of rotting at the beginning which suggest some of the perturbed pain of losing access to your mother tongue.

The poem however is quietly, subtly rebellious.

It celebrates the jubilant overthrowing of a foreign language/power and the resurgence of native language/culture.

Form and style of the poem

Free verse shows spontaneous nature of language

Semantic field of plants

to show how language grows back and blossoms

Semantic field of death, decay and disgust

to show how mother tongue can be impacted by not getting used